Facilitating Love and Forgiveness Conversations for the Fetzer Institute, I saw time and again the far-reaching impact of the ability, or inability, to forgive. Fred Luskin, PhD, author of Forgive for Love, states, “If you are in a relationship that needs healing, the first thing you need to understand is what forgiveness is and why common misconceptions of forgiveness get in the way of truly practicing it.”

Luskin further explains that the act of forgiveness does not mean forgetting or giving up your right to be angry about a hurtful situation. It is actually taking responsibility for how you feel. Forgiveness is the choice to regain control over your feelings. It enables you to “rewrite” the story of being the victim to being the hero who forgives.

 In my Healing Power of Reminiscence workshops, I often witness how unhappy memories can shape a person’s sense of who they are and what they can accomplish. Whether it is an unresolved issue or scars from emotional or physical abuse, when an individual is able to forgive, they are able to move on and feel better about themselves. Instead of attempting blanket forgiveness, this should be done in small bites. One of the most effective ways to do this is to look for the lesson.

 Take for instance, Estelle (fictitious name), an elderly woman in one of my life-writing workshops in Ohio. As an ice breaker in the first session, I asked everyone in the room to introduce themselves and talk about where we grew up. Everyone shared happy memories until it was Estelle’s turn. With arms folded across her ample bosom, she grumbled, “I have no happy memories about my childhood. My mother was a task master and I got married at 16 to the first man that asked me just to get out from under her roof.” 

 Estelle’s story resonated with me and the situation in my own family. Although I shared wonderful memories of my mother in my book, In My Mother’s Kitchen, my older sister’s perspective about many of the same incidents was quite different. Where I saw myself as a recipient of my mother’s love, my sister always saw herself s a victim of her disregard. How did that happen?

 In his book, The Seven Deadly Sins of Memory, Dr. Daniel Schachter, states that our memories do not, like Polaroid snapshots, record a moment in time. Not only do we fail to recall events accurately, we also tend to change how we remember the way things happened according to how we presently feel about that person or event.

 In order to deal with unpleasant events, children will often explain away any hurt or blame by creating a different story about what happened. The more they repeat that version to themselves and others, the more they believe that it actually occurred that way. By not letting go of that childhood story as adults, we can harm ourselves and our ability to have healthy relationships with those involved as well as with others.

 With that in mind, I encouraged Estelle to tell me about her mother. She explained that her mother grew up in an orphanage where she sewed denim work jeans that were sold to support the institution. A farm family eventually took her in, but she was treated more like an indentured servant than a part of the family. Working on the farm during the day, she did not share a bed with the other children but slept alone on the floor by the kitchen stove. Marrying one of the farm hands her mother raised a family and worked a small section of the land as tenant farmers.

 “Things got really tough during the Great Depression and Daddy just lost his mind,” Essie said, finally raising her eyes to meet those in the group. “I remember the day they came to take my father away to the insane asylum. We all had to pitch in with the weeding and planting and all the household chores. I hated the weeding most of all.”

 As she told her mother’s story from an adult perspective, Essie’s arms slowly unfolded and her face became more expressive. She finally said, “Now that I talk about it, I realize all my mother ever knew was work, from the time she was a little girl. No wonder she expected us kids to pitch in and help when Daddy left.”

 With one foot in the door of forgiveness, I gently nudged Estelle a little further and asked if she had learned any lessons from her unhappy memories. Her whole demeanor brightened as she related proudly to the group about how she had raised her sons differently. “I taught them everything they needed to know to take care of themselves, from chopping wood to sewing buttons on their clothes, but I always made sure to have fun with them, too,” she grinned.

 Noting how proud she was of teaching her sons how to take care of themselves, I asked her if there was anything that her mother taught her how to do that she really treasures. Blinking as if to clear away the pages of the old story she had been telling herself for so long she said, “Well, I never thought about it until just now, but my mother did teach me how to sew. You see, I do not have a standard built body so it is hard for me to find clothes to fit right off the rack or from a catalog so I’ve always made my own clothes. All my life, I’ve received compliments on those dresses. I guess I have my mother to thank for that!” 

 The whole group let out a collective sigh as the last bit of tension left the room and Estelle was finally able to not only forgive her mother but to value something about her. It’s just too bad that it took her 93 years!

 In another workshop thousands of miles away in New Zealand, I encountered a much younger woman named Rita, who was struggling with memories of her abusive, alcoholic father. I read my story to the group called “Learning to Walk” in which I shared how my mother decided to correct my severely pigeon-toed feet. Making me walk on the outside edges of the linoleum squares in our apartment, whenever my toes strayed into the square, she would slap me on my back and say, “Walk the right way!” Rita wrote me a letter about how that story inspired her to forgive her father.

 Since meeting you and listening to you talk, life has changed somewhat for me. My father passed away 8 years ago, and my memories of him are painful, as he was very cruel to my mother and brothers. With your advice, I am working my way through the awful memories and finding the good in them instead of just the pain. I have reread your chapter, “Look for the Lesson,” and your story about learning to walk is not unlike mine having to change from a natural left hander to a right hander. If my father caught me using my left hand, it ultimately ended in a surprise good hard hit on the back to make me use my right hand.

 As Rita looked back on those unhappy childhood memories with adult eyes, she saw her father’s left hand in her mind’s eye, gnarled and missing two and half fingers from accidents caused by using to farm with machinery made for right-handed people. She then recognized how it was out of his love for her that he did not want her to suffer as he did.

 I was able to find the lesson in that story quite easily. In fact, in a matter of hours I was able to go back over dozens of childhood traumas, remembering things I saw my father do, and get the same result as the left hand memory.  Absolutely amazing!

 Although her father may have been very hard on this left hand business, Rita says she has him to thank for the ability to use all of life’s instruments, including those that are made for right-handers. She is proud of her beautiful handwriting and the ability to be ambidextrous. An even bigger bonus is that her son, who is also left-handed, did not have to suffer as she did as a child to learn how to use his right hand. Instead of buying him a special mouse, she learned from her experience to gently encourage him to become ambidextrous by playing computer games with the right-handed mouse. 

As you can see from these two stories, one of the most powerful keys to forgiveness can be to look for the lesson. Finding a way to be thankful for what that negative event has taught you can help you to recognize that they did indeed love you. Ultimately, it may help you to feel better about yourself and to establish healthier relationships with others. It may also brighten an otherwise unhappy Mother’s or Father’s Day.

            As the holiday season nears, families make plans to get together for good food, good times, and good memories — or maybe not. Holiday gatherings can be times of sadness if a family is separated from or has lost a loved one. Celebrating the special times you had with them can ease that pain. In addition to filling your table with delectable treats, use the following recipe to feed your soul with happy memories and to find joy during the holidays.

Ingredients to Trigger Memories of Your Loved One:

• Smells like cinnamon, perfume, or burning wood
• Sounds like a slamming screen door, a train whistle, or old songs
• Favorite foods your loved one made for you or loved to eat themselves                                                                                              
• Objects like jewelry, an article of clothing, an ornament, or piece of furniture
• Old photos of special places like the back porch or where you went on vacation

Optional Ingredients:

Not all memories are happy ones. In a separate bowl stir in a cup of funny stories or a handful of things your loved one taught you by deed or example such as:

• An embarrassing moment that you both shared
• A certain way they did something that used to drive you crazy
• Something your loved one taught you like how to fish or bake bread
• Traditions about celebrating holidays like family recipes or ways to decorate

Add a pinch of details like where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing as you write down or talk about whatever comes to mind,. If you cannot remember specifics, ask a relative or childhood friend to add some spices of their own. Once you have shared your memories, you will find personal rituals to celebrate your loved one as you enjoy the holidays.

This recipe is adapted from the exercises in the book, In My Mother’s Kitchen: An Introduction to the Healing Power of Reminiscence by Robin A. Edgar (Tree House Enterprises) and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the author.

After interviewing 100 people who survived the Great Depression in Charlotte, North Carolina for a multi-media project called “Personal Legacies: Surviving the Great Depression,” I learned one of the most effective keys to survival lies within the strength of the community. To make it through the hard times, families moved in with one another, neighbors shared what they had and looked out for one another. Recognizing that they were all in the same boat, people of all cultures and backgrounds worked together.

Another example of a peaceful community-based solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem came from my friend, Patricia Moore. A member of Charlotte’s United Religions Initiative (URI), an organization whose purpose is to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the earth and all living beings, Pat sent me an article from the New York Times Magazine called The Integrationist, written by Russell Shorto. It described how one of Amsterdam’s former mayors, Job Cohen, eased tensions after the unfortunate hate crime was committed by a Muslim against one of Van Gogh’s relatives. Rather than attacking the Muslim community, Cohen encouraged his leadership to take the time to have tea with the Muslim people in their mosques. Unlike the right-wing, anti-immigrant actions of the Freedom Party, whose founder Geert Wilders  is currently facing trial in a Dutch court for inciting hatred, this simple act of communicating with the Muslims on their ground led the community toward a successful, compassionate solution.

As a participant and facilitator in the Fetzer Institute’s Campaign for Love & Forgiveness for the past four years, I have become keenly aware of how interrelated love and forgiveness are with compassion. The Institute believes that “the critical issues in the world can best be served by integrating the inner life of the mind and spirit with the outer life of action and service to the world.”  That reminds me of the old-fashioned custom of barn raising.

In early rural America, community barn raisings were part of a social framework based on interdependence. In response to individual or community need, neighbors would help newcomers construct the frame and rafters for a barn or volunteer to rebuild those structures destroyed by fire or other disasters. Although it is still practiced in Amish and Mennonite cultures here today, the similar concepts have roots in several cultures around the world:

In the Finnish custom, talkoot, a group of volunteers work together in villages or on rural farms for the common community good, like repairing a church, or assisting elderly neighbors or relatives. In urban areas, a talkoot may even be called to help friends move.

In Norway, the dugnader is practiced in rural areas as neighbors participate in house or garage building. In urban areas dugnad activities such as outdoor spring cleaning and gardening are practiced in housing co-operatives.

The Irish word for work group, meitheal, was traditionally used to describe neighbors in rural areas that worked with one another on farm tasks such as preparing hay or gathering the harvest. This spirit of community, where neighbors respond to the needs of each other, is carried over in modern times and a meitheal might be called for a gathering of neighbors and friends to decorate a house in exchange for refreshments.

In modern Philippine culture, the term bayanihan refers to local efforts to resolve a national problem. Based on the root word bayani meaning “hero” the term, bayanihan, is best illustrated in the classic Filipino tradition of carrying a house. As each man carries a portion of the weight, he becomes a hero as he lightens the load for others.

Found in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia, Gotong royong, refers to one of the core tenets of Indonesian philosophy, the cooperation among many toward a shared goal. Since volunteerism is a significant cultural value, in Javanese culture there is a greater respect for those who contribute to the general village welfare than for those who accumulate material wealth.

Naffīr is the Arabic word used in parts of Sudan and the Middle East to describe the gathering of family members and neighbors for a particular task such as building a house or providing help during the harvest in the village. Once the project is accomplished, the group disbands. 

The Cherokee word, ga-du-gi, means working together toward a common goal to benefit all of the Cherokee People, such as building the community council house or participating in the traditional annual green corn harvest ceremony. Still practiced today, ga-du-gi means volunteer community service.

It makes sense that individuals around the world who are in need should be able to turn to their neighbors and community for help and compassion. As in the situation in Amsterdam, our government and community leaders can proactively meet those needs by being in touch with the diverse individuals in their community. Instead of holding rallies that tear down trust, we can hold work parties that meet immediate needs and build pathways for understanding and compassion.

What can I do you ask? Why not adopt my father’s favorite saying, “I kept saying somebody should do something and then I realized that I was somebody!” In my own neighborhood of about 100 homes, for instance, we started a list of able-bodies residents to call upon whenever an elderly resident in our small community needs assistance. The members of “Hands Helping Hands” volunteer to help with small household tasks that seniors cannot do themselves, like picking up prescriptions when they are ill or replacing light bulbs in ceilings.

Even just one person can make a difference. Take Willie Coleman’s example. I met this dynamic woman in the Charlotte community when I interviewed her for the Personal Legacies project. She not only actively participated in a community garden at the Wilmore Community Center, she also personally “adopted” young African-American girls and made sure they graduated high school. Others might do well to adopt Willie’s single-handed “child-raising” effort and mentor students in their underserved communities, especially during the current financial crisis.

Ah, but you say that strength is in numbers. That brings me to the www.350.org movement. On October 10, 2010, individuals in communities around the world will participate in modern-day “barn-raisings” or “work parties” for solutions to our energy crisis. Under the slogan, “Get To Work”, the non-profit is organizing work parties to put up solar panels, insulate homes and schools, erect windmills, plant trees, develop community gardens and more. They hope their actions will send a simple message to our government and community leaders:  “We’re working–what about you?” 

That brings me to another community “work party” opportunity. In conjunction with 350.org, the members of the URI Project committee elected to raise funds and donations in order to plant native fruit and shade trees on the premises of homes built by Habitat for Humanity. Working together toward a common goal that benefits all of the people of Charlotte, URI hopes this example of cooperation among many toward will lighten the load for others. The trees will eventually shade these residences and thereby reduce energy consumption as they contribute to cleaner air and provide nourishment to homeowners and the environment.

As our former President, John F. Kennedy, once urged, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Know any barns that need raising in your neck of the woods?

For more information go to: www.uri.org; www.350.org/oct10; or www.fetzer.org

 Approaching a wall of screaming and spitting white students, she thought of what her father, Herman Counts, always told his family–”Hold your head high.” The wall parted to let her pass.

 Woody Cooper was in the crowd. A good student, he was already accepted to The Citadel and his dad, a Charlotte policeman, told him, “Don’t get involved.” So Woody just stood and watched Dot come down the hill, walking right past him while his classmates cursed at her and called her names.

 The photo that Don Sturkey took of that day for the Observer was eventually seen around the world. Over the years, when Woody looked at the picture, he realized that failing to help Dot that day was the same thing as hurling insults at her.

In 2006, after Woody’s Sunday School lesson about sins of omission, he told his class that he felt he had failed to do right by Dorothy Counts. The very next day, the Observer ran a story about Dorothy and Woody sent an e-mail to the reporter. The reporter forwarded it to Dot.

 Dot and Woody, who are now friends, will be the guests of honor at the dedication of the Red Bench of Love in Charlotte’s Garden of Love and Forgiveness on June 10, 2010. We invited them to be the first to sit on this symbol from our four-year Campaign for Love & Forgiveness. We hope others will visit our Bench and Garden and take the time to find love and forgiveness in their hearts and lives as well.

To learn more go to  http://www.fetzer.org/loveandforgive/blog

 Point #1: The Personal Relationship

You do not get a second chance at a first impression. Communication and networking are key elements to grant writing. Learn how to keep your ear to the ground and ask the right questions in order to get your foot in the door. Funders have program directors that want you to succeed because it is their job to give out grants. They want you to ask them questions before you submit your grant to help you be a success. If the grant maker’s policy is “no unsolicited inquiries or proposals,” you need to do some research to find out who is on their board to invite to your facility or organization. Developing a relationship through this kind of exposure might get them to recommend you. 

Point #2: The Program

 Funders do not fund problems; they invest in programs to address concerns that fit the criteria of what their organization is all about. For instance, a community foundation wants to increase the quality of life of individuals in the community, so it is more likely to fund an after-school tutoring program to bring up the literacy rate than it would support a program to save the whales. Both programs have merit, but you have to match the outcomes of your program with the goals and objectives of the organization doling out the money.

 Point #3: The Proposal

A program proposal details how your program will improve or increase services to individuals the funding source wants to reach. There are several components to a program proposal that requires the input of everyone involved. Once you develop the proposal, you will be able to write a clear and concise summary of your request:

• Introduction: Here is where you brag about yourself. Include information about your organization and the clients it serves. Mention successful past programs and accomplishments of the staff that will be part of the proposed program.
• Problem Statement: Using pertinent statistics and quotes from authorities, demonstrate that the problem to be solved by your program actually exists. Be sure that the problem or need to be addressed relate to your goals and to those of the funding organization.
• Objectives: List the outcomes of the program and how they relate to the problem and the population the program will serve. Specify a timeline how the objectives will be met.
• Methods:  Describe in detail the program activities, listing them in sequential order. Explain how the activities will be staffed and how they will bring about the desired objectives. Be sure to indicate how the clients will be made aware of and selected for the program.
• Evaluation: Generally, you will need a plan that gauges the success of your program. Describe your evaluation criteria and how you propose to gather and analyze the data. Include copies of questionnaires and reports.
• Continued Funding: Since your program is so wonderful, you will want it to continue. Present a plan to continue to fund the program.
• Budget: Yes folks, the “B” word. Every grant has one, so be prepared. This takes teamwork, so enlist every department to delineate the expenses and income of the program. Be very specific and delineate which expenses are to be met by the funding organization and which will your organization or other sources fund. Do not forget to include income from other sources and in-kind donations wherever possible.

 Point #4: The Package

You do not get a second chance at a first impression. Once you have gathered your information, be sure to put it in clear, concise terms. Eliminate jargon and check for spelling and grammatical errors. Use your letterhead whenever appropriate. Give yourself plenty of lead-time to acquire letters of recommendation and support so you have originals and not faxed copies by the deadline. Make a checklist from the instructions for required number of copies, materials and signatures. Place the information in binders with dividers or pocket folders in order to make your presentation the best that it can be.

 You cannot write your best grant until you write your first one. Assembling the above information and acquiring key documentation, such as your organization’s mission statement, annual operating budget, letters of support, etc. will make future grant-writing even easier. Remember, there is nothing to it but to do it!

 Robin Edgar is a freelance grant writer and consultant. A graduate of the week-long grant-writing workshop offered by The Grantsmanship Center of Los Angeles, CA, she has been writing successful grants for over ten years.

Sidebar

Resources for Grant Opportunities:

Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County – located at 301 North Tryon Street, Charlotte; 704-336-2725; www.plcmc.lib.nc.us.  PLCMC Foundation Center Cooperating Collection of nonprofit resources is on the second floor. The reference department has a section devoted to nonprofit management (fundraising, grant writing, volunteer/board development, etc.)

National Endowment for the Humanities – www.neh.fed.us/ – An independent grant-making agency of the United States government.

Grants Alert – www.grantsalert.com –database and e-mail alert to access education and youth-related funding opportunities.

Sift flour, sugar and dry ingredients in a bowl. Add remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Batter should be the consistency of your ear lobe — if too dry, add jelly, sour cream or yogurt. Place in greased pans (bottom of aluminum ice cube trays).Bake at 350º for1/2 hour or until golden brown. Cool, then slice and place on a cookie sheet, wide side up, and bake at 350º for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Makes about two dozen.

 Born Dec 12 1906

 “We survived because we lived within our means.”

R. Powell Majors graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of Florida in 1928. That November, he accepted a job for $125 a month with Peat Marwick and Mitchell, a public accounting and auditing firm in Charlotte. He had to sell his tuxedo for eighteen dollars in order to have money to move there. For the first two months, he stayed at the YMCA on the corner of Second and South Tryon Streets and then rented a room with a college friend in a private home on Greenway Avenue off of Caswell Road, close to Mercy Hospital. He rode the streetcar to work, buying four tickets for a quarter.

            The accounting business was fairly good until February 1931 when I became unemployed. I knew it was going to hit me because income tax was due by March 15 and, by February 1, we did not have anything to do. Everybody was broke. The government did not take taxes out of paychecks at that time, and if you did not make $1,500 dollars a year, you were exempt from federal income tax.

            After one week, I got a job for the Veterans Administration who needed extra help paying off a bonus to WWI veterans. I worked from three o’clock in the afternoon to eleven o’clock at night. When Tryon Drug Store went bankrupt, the receiver hired me to keep the books from 8:00 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon. Mr. Holmes, one of the former Tryon Drug partners, opened Park Place Pharmacy and hired me to work on Saturday and Sunday, teaching his daughter to keep the books.

            By that time, I was living with the Hal Bobbitt family and was working so much that dating was out of the question. I did not even have time to get a haircut. All of those jobs were temporary, so I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way.          

            At the end of May 1931, my jobs ran out, so I went to Florida to visit my family in St. Petersburg for two weeks’ vacation. I did not tell them I was unemployed because they had problems of their own. Their real estate business went kaput way before the Depression.

            When I returned to Charlotte, the Bobbitts woke me early the next morning because Mr. Bobbitt’s brother, Bill, wanted to talk to me about a job. He was an attorney for Independent Trust Company and they had foreclosed on a loan to a finance company in Hendersonville, They had to liquidate the collateral and the CEO of the finance company had an unsavory reputation, so they wanted an honest person to handle the pocketbook. The vice president interviewed me on the drive to Asheville and I got hired.

            A lot of people were out of work, so my job was not very pleasant. I was trying to get money out of people who did not have it so I had to sue them. I stayed there one year to the hour and moved back to Charlotte to work for Peat Marwick. After I did an audit at Southern Asbestos Company, they offered me forty dollars a week to work for them.

            I married Dorothy Alma Fortune in 1933. The first year we were married, I worked out a daily form to put down what we spent every day and develop a budget. Dot took five dollars a week and bought all of the groceries. She had milk delivered to the door and the laundry, too. Our rent was thirty-five dollars a month and I was making thirty-six dollars a week. I smoked in those days and bought cigarettes for $1.25 a carton. In 1934, we had to buy a refrigerator for nine dollars a month. It was the first time I was in debt and it drove me crazy.

            We survived because we lived within our means. One of our favorite eating places was Holmes Restaurant on South Tryon Street, just below the Catholic Church. They had good food and it was real reasonable. For thirty-five cents, you could go to Thacker’s on South Tryon for a meat and two vegetables. You could get the same at the S&W Cafeteria in 1935.

I was affected by the Depression. I still turn out lights and conserve on everything. We raised our two children, Robert, Jr. and Nancy, that way.

            After resigning from Southern Asbestos in 1943, Powell went on to work for Lance, Inc. for twenty-five years. A civic-minded institution, Lance encouraged him to get involved in the community. As a member Charlotte Rotary Club for 68 years, he served as president in 1946 and as president of Red Cross in 1953. After he retired, he worked part time for Central Piedmont Community College as a fundraiser for 19 years.

His advice: Get an education and learn to take care of what money you have. Be moderate in everything.

                My kids were all in bed and I was cleaning up the aftermath of macaroni and cheese and algebra homework. Something was stuck in the oven drawer and I could not get it to shut.  After a one-sided wrestling match, I finally pulled the whole darn thing out, falling backwards and landing on my bottom. Accompanying this thud were the drums and cymbals of pots and pans crashing to the floor.  From this new viewpoint I could finally see the culprit.  That pesky mandel bread pan had managed to squirm its way out the back again and wedge itself between the drawer and the wall.  It’s not really a baking pan at all, but the bottom of an old aluminum ice-cube tray, the kind they don’t seem to make anymore now that plastic is around. 

My mother used this oddball utensil to bake her famous mandel bread, a semi-sweet Russian pastry that was my “If I were lost on a desert island and could have only one thing to eat” food. She discovered it was just the right size to bake my favorite treat in her toaster oven so she didn’t have to turn on the big oven and heat up the whole kitchen.

Using a broom handle, I fished for this sacred vessel, dented and stained from years of service, and gently dusted it off.  Carefully I placed it back in the drawer. Every year on my mother’s birthday, I pull it out and bake mandel bread in my toaster oven.

For my daughter’s wedding shower, in addition to her other gift, I gave her a set of old and dented aluminum ice cube trays that I had been saving for years. I included a recipe card with her grandmother’s mandel bread recipe, so she could carry on the tradition of love and good eating.

From In My Mothers Kitchen: An Introduction to the Healing Power of Reminiscence

by Robin A. Edgar (Tree House Enterprises 2003)

 Ingredients to Trigger Memories of Your Loved One:

• Smells like cinnamon, perfume, or burning wood
• Sounds like a slamming screen door, a train whistle, or old songs
• Favorite foods your loved one made for you or loved to eat themselves                                                                                              
• Objects like jewelry, an article of clothing, an ornament, or piece of furniture
• Old photos of special places like the back porch or where you went on vacation

Optional Ingredients:

Not all memories are happy ones. In a separate bowl stir in a cup of funny stories or a handful of things your loved one taught you by deed or example such as:

• An embarrassing moment that you both shared
• A certain way they did something that used to drive you crazy
• Something your loved one taught you like how to fish or bake bread
• Traditions about celebrating holidays like family recipes or ways to decorate

 Add a pinch of details such as where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing as you write down or talk about whatever comes to mind,. If you cannot remember specifics, ask a relative or childhood friend to add some spices of their own. Once you have shared your memories, you will find personal rituals to celebrate your loved one as you enjoy the holidays.

This recipe is adapted from the exercises in the book, In My Mother’s Kitchen: An Introduction to the Healing Power of Reminiscence by Robin A. Edgar (Tree House Enterprises) and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the author.

Registration is limited to 12 participants. Fees for this weekend retreat include a double-occupancy room for two nights and five meals. To register, please contact Robin Edgar at 2robinedgar@gmail.com or visithttp://www.robinedgar.com.

WHEN: October 8-10, 2010
WHAT: A Story Circle Life Writing Retreat with Robin Edgar
WHERE: Wild Acres Retreat, Little Switzerland, NC
COST: $230 for SCN members, $255 for non-members

Check out my latest review on Examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-25084-Charlotte-Creative-Arts-Examiner